The changing rules of Bollywood Marketing

Bollywood is a different animal - the financial ecosystem of distribution makes tracking box office collections a hazardous exercise. Sure trade papers report them and some are even available online, but its rare for them to come up with consistent numbers. And the final verdict of hit/flop is rarely rationalized to consumers.

Nevertheless Bollywood buzz is fairly reliable - if you know how to track vested interests - you can reasonably ascertain the box office fate of movies.

To start with, a good movie is a necessary but not a sufficient condition (the definition of good here is entirely subjective).

Its a hard earned lesson in Hollywood: action movies open big and fall off dramatically after the opening weekend (if you lose less than 50% of your first week audience - you are doing very well). This happens regardless of the quality of the movie or word of mouth. If the subsequent buzz on the movie is good, the movie plays longer and the fall off is more gradual. But its always there - action movies rarely raise their collections after opening week.

The most technical sophistication in Bollywood of late has arguably come in this genre. And with it comes the technique of opening big. How does one open big? There are four main things to get right.

Get big names that can open a movie. These are names like Shahrukh Khan, Hrithik Roshan, Aishwarya that will draw in the crowds on face recognition alone

Make enough prints so that not a single potential ticket buyer has to go back home. This requires the building out of megaplexes that can house dozens of screens - and its been happening of late, providing the infrastructure needed for huge opening collections.

Time your publicity. This is trickier in Bollywood than it is in Hollywood because of the factor music plays in the success of the movie (more on that later). But the basic idea is this: whip your audience in a frenzy but don't leave them hanging weeks for the final product. This requires timing and calls for hiring stars who don't mind doing endless press junkets.

Make shorter movies. So you can cram more shows into opening weekend.

In short, if you can estimate how much a big name is worth on opening weekend, the running length of your film and how much you expect to take, you can create your marketing and print budget carefully enough to get you to the first week bonanza.

2. Go gradual when it comes to smaller movies

Another statistical lesson learned by Hollywood - chick flicks open small and run longer. They can even gain market share as they go along. This technique is also used to open smaller movies where a studio carefully wants to build word of mouth. Some recent examples are movies like Little Miss Sunshine and Juno.

And in Bollywood movies like Vivah and Jab We Met are two little movies that started small and went on to bigger box office collections purely via word of mouth and a widening of the screening audience. In India word of mouth is perhaps more powerful than in any other country with large film industries. Audiences are very opinionated, can be highly dismissive and are very rapid movers of buzz. If you have a good movie that can't hope to compete against big studio tentpoles, this very attribute of Indian audiences becomes a powerful marketing tool.

3. Think out of the box

Indian audiences have been looking at posters for ages now. And heavy rotations of cooked up trailers (mostly excuses to flash music and other bling at potential viewers) is fast becoming a tired way of gaining eyeballs. So what does an aspiring Bollywood marketer to do?

How about send your star to do a guest spot on a widely watched TV show? Here the show has to be picked carefully because your audience demographic has to be matched. The numbers on Indian TV are notoriously unreliable. But Indian producers and insiders have a remarkably good feel for who is watching the shows. This accounts for the proliferation of movie "guests" on India's multitude of reality shows.

Indian audiences are hugely attached to music. And the advent of MTV has transformed music into a visual medium for younger generations. (There is a reason Beyonce sells more albums than Erykah Badu). Viewers will go watch a movie simply to see a song or an item number - they'll endure 3 hours of drivel to watch their favorite star shimmy for 3 minutes. Regardless of how much movie they watch - they still pay the same.

But item numbers can be awkward to fit into a movie, so why not acknowledge that its a marketing tool by creating an item number but keep it out of the movie. Its a great way to have a full length song play on MTV or B4U while not giving much away (and you don't have to spend much on end credit graphics because the song can be reused).

5. Don't be dishonest with the audience

Not because its wrong, but because it can hurt your bottom line. A lot of times you'll see item numbers inserted into the movie featuring a major star. But once the item number is over the star disappears from the movie. Yet the song is used in heavy rotation to promote the film. This technique is basically disingenuous and can result in the ire of fans. Not only will it generate bad word of mouth for your film but could also blacklist a filmmaker.

A variation on this is to market a movie differently to multiple audiences: for example, one trailer will show the movie as a romance, another will tout it as a thriller, yet another will focus on the action sequences. Unless your movie is a true many-headed masala movie - this catch-all marketing path is a bad one to tread.

6. Pick the name of your movie carefully

Filmmakers regularly pick catchy names - and they'll often pick names that come with built in recognition like the name of a song (or a catchy chorus) in another. This is the next best thing to reusing a name (which requires costly remake rights). Catchy songs - by virtue of being deployed copiously in antaksharis - roll easily off the tongue, thus making the movie easy to reference, discuss and relate to.

This works the wrong way with bad names as well. Take Manorama: Six Feet Under for example. Given its film noir nature, it might want to appeal to urban audiences, but it had to give up wider appeal - and thats even before it was released.

That is seriously some interesting stuff. But I disagree with you on the small films. While they open small and increase sales gradually from word of mouth publicity, they are also prone to piracy. I am ashamed of it but I will admit that unless it is a multi-starrer with huge production and of course great reviews, I watch a pirated copy of most movies. I almost never want to risk my money on a movie that started out small.

never mind!!, I think you are on to something. So basically what you are saying is that if you don't go in for the big opening you are subject to piracy eating into your profits. I hope I interpreted that right.

Have been reading this blog for a while now. But am just commenting now. So I'll just jump in.

I am actually the opposite. If it's a good film with good reviews--to go to the theater to watch (though I've never been to the theater to watch and Indian film) but the theory holds.

I would also watch in the theater if it were some big grand good movie that must be watched on the big screen for its visuals.

Though I will add, I do my share of illegal watching no matter what type of movie it is. If I really like it, I'll buy it. :)

Also. The Ishq Kameena song. It's been a while but it wasn't it well published and advertised that Aishwarya was doing an item number? Did people actually think she was in the movie?

Maybe it's because I read the newspapers and all, but a lot of people in India read the paper as well (in a class I learnt that it has the highest number of newspaper readers and the medium isn't declining in the country)

I've never been happy with the quality of DVDs burnt on the down low (esp. the audio) and so I try to avoid them. If a big movie has to be seen - I make an event out of it with the family and go see it. But there are times when the only thing available is a pirated DVD esp. when you want to catch up with something.

Regarding Ishq Kamina - unless you clarify in the song itself, you run the risk of dis-ingenuity. But if you have a better example for me, let me know and I'll be happy to link to it.

Lin: my cousins in India read an English paper (Indian Express), a Marathi paper (Loksatta) and an afternoon tabloid (Mid Day) all in the same day! And they're kids, doing their undergrad. I used to do the same till I moved to the US and now I don't bother to read even the Chicago Tribune. Get all my news from Yahoo. Papers here (with the exception of WSJ) are atrocious. I wouldn't waste a penny on subscriptions :-p

Not that papers in India don't suck ('Slimes of India' comes to mind) but generally they're better.

Very interesting write-up aspi. Its not as if item songs always help to make the movie a hit. God punishes the dishonest???:). Kareena Kapoor did an item song for some movie of her hairdresser or someone...Her song is still greatly remembered, but the movie flopped badly.My son watched Krazy4 with his friends yday, and said that Rakhi;s song was horrible, SRK's was ok, and only Hrithik's was very good. But he says its not worth going to the theatre cos u can get to see the song on tv instead.This is a teenager's opinion. I am told ekta kapoor goes to very great extents to publicise her movies, her brother;s movies actually. It seems she has the hero and heroine of her serials singing and dancing to the song of her movies. She also keeps bringing up the name of the movie in her serials..(Info thanks to an aunt who is a KSBKT buff).We also have some rules for movies. For very good movies with action etc, we go to multiplexes. For movies which are so-so and the inane comedies, we go to the stand-alone theatres where tickets r priced very reasonable.So u dont feel miserable havign wasted money on a boring movie.So no drifter has watched K4 and UMH?

But I will clarify. I think my first paragraph got jumbled. I didn't realize it till I went back to read.

I meant I am actually the opposite. If the film is a small film that looks good and has good reviews, I am more likely to watch that in the theater than making a big effort to watch some huge big blockbuster.

pitu--"Slimes of India' comes to mind"I, myself, prefer TOIlet. Whoever came up with that is a semi-genius. :)

Aspi, have you seen this documentary on SRK by the BBC's Nasreen Munni Kabir? He talks about this stuff and it was the first time I'd seen a Bollywood star talk intelligently about the business of moviemaking and how he saw the business grow.

Lin and Never Mind are talking about the difference between American and Indian moviegoers actually. There is this feeling in America that if you like something small then you're obliged to support it - and buy the movie that I stole from the net if I liked it when it comes out. George Clooney is an excellent example: a lot of his movies don't open well or have small BO runs but perform really well in DVD sales, to the extent that he got a "higher than usual" cut of the DVD sales for Michael Clayton instead of charging his usual $20 million fee. This is slowly catching on India but there's no feeling of obligation per se, I don't think.

And Ekta Mata would do ANYTHING to promote her movies. It's been a while but doesn't she make her TV stars shill everything from her movies to whatever new program is being put on air by the channel? I remember her pulling this stunt for KBC or something too. And of course, Tusshar wouldn't have a career without his sister.

Anu G - I saw UMH and have a review coming up tomorrow but to be honest, I didn't care for it all that much. I think the second half was okay with the last twenty minutes or so being really good but by then I didn't really care.

Here are some of other things that work as the USP of a movie. Some of these are controlled by the actors themselves while others are side effects of their personal lives. It is free marketing although can back fire sometimes:

1) Actors who have limited their exposure (Amir Khan or Kajol)2) First time pairings after an event (Kareena-Shahid in JWM, Abhi-Ash in Guru or Sarkaar Raaj, Kareena-Saif in Tashan)3) Actors/Actresses getting a leaner thinner body or six pack abs(SRK in OSO, Kareena in Tashan, Ash in D2)4) Unusual pairings (Deepika-SRK, Shahid-Bipasha)

nice analysis, aspi. it's interesting that reported BO figures are so widely different. The website u linked us to declares Jodhaa Akbar a super hit having grossed Rs 620 mill, yet i've read elsewhere that the film barely treads water and then too only coz of a superb international run. in this day and age one would imagine a better BO reporting system. Also where does one get reports of how much a film cost to make? Bheja Fry was declared a hit i think coz it grossed 100 mil (?) but was made on a shoestring budget. At a declared cost of Rs 400 mill, how much did JA need to generate to be declared a hit?

Pitu, got to protest strongly girl! I haven't read a better newspaper than the New York Times --- reading it and watching Jon Stewart constitute my religion :). Call me a snob, but I'm disappointed when I read the Indian press - short on content and long on gossip. every national daily seems to run tabloid like features. Lin, that may however partly explain why a rising circulation is bucking a worldwide trend. i think the TOI has a larger circulation than the NYT.

what also works at the BO with big openings? apparently puerile comedies with item numbers. if rediff is to be believed, despite being trashed by the critics, K4 has opened well.

Sidekick, cmon, all Indian newspapers r not like that.How can u forget 'The Hindu'. It gives facts as they r , and detailed analysis of every topic.Er..a little too serious for my taste, I guess I am one of the aam junta who wants some local news and masala alongwith the regular news:).

Amrita, haven't seen that interview. But these rules are very tried and tested.

Clooney's $20m price tag is a Hollywood trend that has come to Bollywood via SRK. But that - along with Joules' rules would make for a fun post on star marketing.

Sidekick (hope you aren't being run into the ground this week at work), BO reports work as part of a honor system. Studios report their earnings - the media compiles them into lists. Studios have been known to tweak their reports by a million here or there. But overall it isn't a huge cheat (like a flop being declared a hit for example).

In India the expectation that you have to be open in a largely cash economy just can't be acted on. But lets give it time...

Sidekick, I never liked the NYT (read it for free at my ad agency) although their coverage is certainly good. I find it too be very 'My country is always right', they just aren't objective enough and as an Indian, it pisses me off. WSJ is so much better than that. But 'The Hindu' as Anu said, is very good, as is Indian Express. The funny thing is that regional papers in India are also very well written. I absolutely adore 'Loksatta', it's phenomenal. Chicago Tribune is SHAMEFUL! And Atlanta Journal Constitution was also awful.

Great write up Aspi! You never fail to amaze us with your intelligent thoughts! Item songs tend to be one of the big reasons as to why people watch a movie. I remember when Bunty aur Babli came out, a lot of people (and a little part of me)wanted to see the movie because "isnt this the movie with Ashwariya does an item number with the Bachchan men?" If marketed and publicized right, a decent item number can be a reason for a success of a movie. I mean, the Kajra re song was good and the fact that the movie wasnt too bad ended up being a bonus!!

I wonder how the geographical distribution plays into this? How do large opening movies fare outside of the major metros in India. There seems to be scant info on the small towns, bustling districts etc. Is the revenue from these areas not significant enough? I would have thought these would be prime targets for the mass appeal movies. Also, some states are better than others for hindi movies outside the central northern belt.

Even, Second and Third tier cities are definitely not there in terms of megaplexes. the potential for a huge opening weekend is still not tapped with this nfrastructure.

i too watch most of the movies on dvd ...mostly because i'm too impatient to get stuck for 3 hrs in the theatre.but if the movie is heard to be very good only then i make sure i catch it in the theatres[one of the main reasons why i see all the movies two weeks after their release]

and about newspapers,i agree with Anu G.'the Hindu' is simply superb.i never used to prefer it before..but now i can't help getting addicted to it.it's surely a class apart!

About marketing,something very crazy happens here in the south.[by south i mean AP and TN]i have no idea how it works in the north.what happens is that the big actors here like chiranjeevi and nagarjuna and ofcourse not forgetting Rajnikanth..they all have these big fan associations who get access to tickets before everyone else..they make sure the fans create a lot of noise...that brings huge publicity,i must say!other people seldom get to watch it that early.what's even more surprising is that Junior NTR had a huge fan association even before his very first release!![now that's a li'l too much!]ofcourse they spend a lot on these fans too but i guess that funda works pretty well 'cos this tradition of 'fan associations' works like crazy here.

Use a huge fan base to make sure the collections are good and up goes your BO collections!!!!

meena, thats a great question and one that always confounds me. I just don't know enough and there isn't enough reliable material out there to draw conclusions.

For e.g. you'll hear trade papers say: Sunny Deol plays really well in the Punjab-Delhi belt. Fair enough - but what are the collections from those areas compared to others? The info is unreliable.

Since numbers are unreliable I've simply stared at them until I've been able to discern patterns. And the pattern looks like this: if collections were search engine hits, then Mumbai is Google, Delhi is Yahoo and everyone else is Microsoft Live.

Meena,me thinks..........about the regional distribution,more than the infrastructure it is the preference of the majority of public that plays a crucial role for the BO collections.

for eg: in a non-hindi speaking state,more specifically in districts and towns of that state,even though the infrastructure is good they wudn't prefer seeing a bollywood flick..wudn't like spending money on it..on a movie the language of which they don't understand.obviously the collections won't be that good that way.so ofcourse a sunny deol movie will work better in the delhi punjab belt than anywhere else,won't it?

it's here where the industry again picks up strategies like releasing big bollywood movies dubbed into regional languages[which suck, totally!]happened with JA.the movie starts working well and is recieved well with the regional audience.and for die-hard ash and hrithik fans, if the movie isn't released in hindi in their place they don't have a choice,do they?

then the reports might as well say that the movie has done very well in all the parts of the country.

who's looking into details of language when your talking about the gross amount?

it will be belived that the movie has run more than many better recieved,real 'HIT' movies like JWM and the like.

Excellent analysis! Some additional points I thought of:- Time your release to big holidays - more people are free to watch movies through the day - Diwali/Id/Pongal releases get big publicity usually.- As part of the TV promos, I see a lot of actors selling their movies on the various news channels as well. - Actor blogs: build up anticipation for movies by having some actors start a blog during the shooting of the movie, and provide updates at regular intervals. This is still pretty rare, but I think it will catch on soon. - hey you forgot a very important technique - create an unnecessary roadblock to the movie - lots of free publicity!

pitu, not surprisingly i couldn't disagree with you more w.r.t. the NYT and the WSJ! I see the NYT as relatively balanced on the role of the US and international positions, although I have peeves with individual writers.OTOH, WSJ has great coverage of business news, but the conservative political philosophy sets my teeth on edge second only to Fox News! Happily we can agree to disagree :). What I really like with the NYT is how they've integrated blogs of writers into news articles. i love the freakonomics blog, Olivia Judson’s blog and Tara Parker-Pope’s health blog.

anu g, i agree the hindu is a pretty solid paper, but sort of the exception. the lack of a pragmatic approach on gossip vs news fm folks like me may be leading newspapers out of business!

Meena, it seems that the economics of movie making has changed a fair bit thanks to the multiplexes. I think it was in this BBC interview that Javed Akhtar bemoaned the fact that given the power of urban multiplexes to drive economic success, fewer movies reflect the plight of rural and small town folk.

For some reason I associate NYT with Janet Maslin. But I should also mention that my favorite papers are BBC News online and Google News.

I think the fate of newspapers hangs in the balance. Just like TV changed the game for that medium, Web 2.0 is doing the same. I'd like to see NYT hire a New Media Analyst and start twittering their news or start a FriendFeed or something. (Hey NYT, I'm available part-time)

And since Pitu brought up Loksatta and Indian Express, can I reminisce how I used to work for both papers in Vadodara? I was a skinny little teenage reporter covering sports and I still remember that cheeky little kid coming to the University ground and hitting fours all over the park - whatsisname, ah yes, Sachin.

Cinderella, thats a great point about the marketing of southern movies - the inevitable fan clubs. These tend to be quite fanatical in the small towns and districts guaranteeing great runs for movies with stars like Balakrishna. also, this spawns a culture of megastardom for actors. This factor is absent in the hindi movie industry.

sidekick, true about the urban megaplexes influencing moviemaking. most of the movies nowadays come drenched with urban slickness that is eons away from the dehati type feel of a lot of movies of the past decades, witness - race.

I think WSJ politics is a good mix. I'm a Libertarian, not a Democrat so maybe that's why I like that they're not too liberal. That doesn't mean I agree with all their opinions (for eg. their support for the Iraq war) but I like that they report facts without coloring them. Plus, they always bring the point back to Business and Economics. It's hard-core Capitalism so that rocks for me. And their articles are centrist, not reactionary. Anyway, as you said, we'll have to agree to disagree... Btw I love these political discussions :-) I grew up reading the FT (my dad subscribed to it from London so we always got it a few hrs late) but oh, that paper is so close to my heart.

Aspi: That's awesome! But how did you report for Loksatta given that it's in Marathi? Did they translate? I cannot believe you used to see Sachin!!!!!!!!! He's like my Bhagwaan! Any juicy stories about him? Pray, tell!

Loksatta also comes out in Gujarati from Vadodara. My dad is a bit of a Gujarati pundit and was a reporter for the early part of his career and used to work there. So first they would have me report (during Summers) and translate my reports. And then an Indian Express (Loksatta was a sister pub) opening came up - I got de facto nominated. This way, they would get reports in both papers for the price of one.

My first story was a scintillating one: why are most of Baroda's pools shut down this summer? I spent one week on that touring empty pools with the permanent stench of pool chemicals.

No scintillating cricket stuff - I used to simply report. But as you may know Vadodara has produced some big ass test players so lots of gossip. Always a curiosity to find out which bhola bhaala looking new cricketer went hog wild cruising for hookers on tours.

Pitu, thanks for the link but that isn't the one on the 2004 study you referenced, right? --- unless i'm missing something major. i was interested in the data since yep -- left-leaning is the last thing i would characterize the wsj as. i like the paper and subscribe to it. i think walter mossberg who reviews tech gadgets has one of the coolest jobs ever and i discovered rodrigo y gabriela’s music thanks to a WSJ review (for which i'm subjected to endless ribbing!). i totally agree on the solid econ approach --- just not on the journal's politics ;). plus i think newspapers become like flavors of toothpaste - essential and somewhat addictive- so I unabashedly admit that I'm anything but unbiased in my love for the NYT :)

aspi yr early journalism career is impressive :D .anything in there to mine for an autorisksha confessions post?

Sidekick: I agree about the addictive bit. I can listen to criticism re:WSJ but FT, no way! It's so sad when a newspaper has the ability to make your heart skip a beat, makes you wonder how geeky you are ;-)